New codec releases are things one usually shouldn't spend holding one's breath waiting for. (ack, what a grammatical nightmare)

I'd like to steer this thread away from the "When's SV8 coming out?" sort of question, though in effect that's probably what it boils down to.

No, seriously, I'd like to know if the improvements in the next MPC release will warrant waiting a while longer to transparently archive that CD collection. I started out with the current MPC encoder but stopped once I noticed my tracks have noticeable gaps between songs (as opposed to the also superb Ogg Vorbis). If this is mppenc's or Winamp's fault I'll have to find out, but I HAVE heard that other people have had problems with gaps also (previous forum thread). Furthermore, I was wondering if there will be any other major changes that would be worth waiting for (structure overhaul, psychoacoustic improvements, free beer, etc.)

I don't have any problems playing gapless with SV7. I use mppdec (the command line player/decoder) that is just so sweet for it's ultra low cpu usage. Don't know about the Winamp Plugins.

IIRC you'll be able to convert SV7 to SV8 but I wouldn't put my hand into the fire for that.

Furthermore the SV8 standard will be somwhere in between the SV7 standard and extreme.

But I'd suggest start using it now otherwise you'll say, "Oh, I'll wait for SV9" when SV8 comes out. Quality is already very high and sufficient for transparent archieving. That source will be available might be useful for cross-platform availibility - and of course for those users "I use the codec because of its license". Don't know under what license it will be released though.

IMHO, they don't - I at least wouldn't wait. The quality is already near-perfect, I doubt it will get noticeably better. And a lossless converter from SV7 to SV8 was indeed mentioned several times.

I can't understand your gap problems though - MPC is actually totally gapless, just like Ogg Vorbis. Could you please post a link to that thread you were speaking about? (Too lazy to search ATM... )

There were a bug in earlier version of mpc that could cause gaps, though it was very rare.
That bug has been fixed though.